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| - I was excited to hear that the Hong Kong-style Chicken Pot is finally coming to Toronto and wanted to try badly.
I made reservation for a large group a week after their grand opening. It took me two attempts before I could have my reservation confirmed. When I called in the afternoon, I was told that they would call back my number to confirm because they were very busy at the moment. It was odd that they could not take my reservation at that time. And of course, they didn't end up calling me back. So I had to make a second call.
When our group arrived, we were promptly seated at a big round table. It's always nice to dine at a round table when you have a large group. I especially love the decor and all the hong kong style touches they put into the space. It was very nostalgic. But, all of us were a bit confused with how their menu/system works so the chef came to our table and explained everything to us.
This is how this place works:
Everybody was charged a flat rate based on the 2 options that were available to us at the time (cheesy chicken pot $35.99 or original chicken pot $29.99). For the original chicken pot, you could customize level of spiciness. We were recommended by the chef to start with mild and increase spiciness with each refills. You basically get served "unlimited" chicken in their signature sauce inside a pot on the stove. After you're done eating with this cooking style, you could then ask for your pot to turn into a hot pot. The staff would pour in chicken broth and serve you AYCE items such as veggies, meat balls, corn, crab meat, wontons and some other basic hot pot food items. It was an interesting concept. With the pricing, each person also get served a bowl of hearty chicken soup and clay pot chicken rice.
Here's what I found confusing, we were only served 2 clay pots rice that night to share between 8 of us. Whether the number of clay pots rice was determined by number of people or by table remained a mystery to me.
The original chicken was marinated in their signature Mala Sichuan sauce and came bone-in. It was well seasoned, tender and flavourful. The cheesy chicken although was highly recommended by the chef, was a little bit disappointed for me. The cheesy sauce was bland. The crispy boneless chicken was soggy when served with the cheesy sauce. And since we had a huge group, we ordered both of these pots to try and actually found that both dishes balanced each other out quite nicely.
However, we got a little bit sick of eating the same taste over and over again after the 3rd or 4th refills. And the older lady manager made us feel a bit uncomfortable with the refills. To be honest, the portion that came with each pot was actually not enough to go around 8 people and we only had 2 pots to share among us. We ended ordering 6 refills for the original chicken pot and 3 refills for the cheesy pot. If you do the math, that was roughly one pot per person for $30+. So not sure why she was giving us a hard time if this was meant to be "unlimited". Anyway, when we turned them into hot pot, the flavours were quite bland. And even with the broth added to it, the taste was still the same.
One of the drawbacks was the location. It was quite out of the way from central Markham. And both of their speed of service and ventilation need improvement. Quite a few people felt a slight discomfort from inhaling the chilli peppers in the air and had to cover their nose/mouth while dining.
I wasn't sure if I'd come back again unless they add more other flavours to the menu.
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